Down in Dorset with Cath

Last week, I was lucky enough to go on a four day workshop with Lynda Monk – in Dorset, which is a very long way from Leicestershire! It was a challenge for me to travel so far and there are not many artists I would do that for but I had attended a day's workshop with Lynda a couple of years ago and it was so good that I jumped at the chance.

I suppose you could call it a creative retreat. It was located in the beautiful setting of The Kingcombe Centre, part of Dorset Wildlife Trust, and we felt very much removed from the outside world, particularly as the internet and phone signals were rather unpredictable. It was very well organised by Maria Swain and Ann Emery and they certainly chose a wonderful place to be.

Having broken my long journey at Bristol, it took a couple of hours more to get there and the closer I got, the narrower the roads became, until I was driving along single track lanes brimming with wildflowers. Breathtakingly beautiful ... and I pulled into the gate at Kingcombe just in time for lunch – the first of many delicious meals.

After a quick introduction from Lynda, we spent the afternoon producing resources to be used during the following days – surfaces with layers of Lutradur of different weights, tissue, various mediums and adding colour with paint, ink or dyes, with some liberal sprinkling of salt.

Crumpled Tissue Sample

Reverse of stencilled moulding paste sample

A section of the right side of the above

I was particularly pleased with the stencilled moulding paste sample and would like to try it on a much larger scale.

We also had a messy time with Modroc, which I’d seen in school in my former teaching life, but had never had the chance to use myself. We layered it over a balloon to make a bowl.

After another delicious meal (I won’t mention any more meals!), we returned to the studio for the evening session - a very interesting talk from Lynda, about her personal journey into the textile art world.

Day 2 dawned bright and sunny and we continued working on the surfaces we’d made the day before and producing more, using painted Tyvek paper, layered in various combinations with acrylic felt, foil, fabric, thermofax screen prints and bubble wrap! I was so busy that I completely forgot to take any photos so these were taken later.

We also printed both sides of a large sheet of cartridge paper, using stencils and thermofax screens, which was later made into a book (which was a surprise and a source of amusement for some Traverse members as they know that I'm not usually into making books). However, I did enjoy the serendipity of assigning the pages, tearing the paper up and sorting the signatures randomly. The idea is to work further into these pages, when inspiration comes ...

Difficult to choose but I think this just might be my favourite ...

I made a mistake when making the holes for the binding, as can clearly be seen here ...

We had the option of working on into the evenings until at least 9.30 and most people chose to do that, fortified with wine and chocolate. I certainly needed to if I had any chance of keeping up!

The following morning, we had an interesting little added extra as the Kingcombe Centre had kindly set up the moth trap overnight and we had a little look at the various specimens inside. Unfortunately, I can't remember the names of these two lovely creatures.

Day 3 in the course notes was flagged up by Lynda as ‘busy' – we smiled and wondered what the previous day and a half had been in her eyes! Joking aside, she is an excellent tutor who caters for all - fast workers, who finish every activity quickly and those, like me, who take a lot longer.

We removed the balloons and covered our Modroc bowls with a layer of gesso, which I used to attach some scrim, both around the top to soften the edge and to emphasise the spiral line going around it. This was followed with a layer of white acrylic paint. When it was dry, I drilled holes in it to enable me to stitch later and then painted it with contrasting layers of Golden fluid acrylic paint. I rubbed back the top layer to reveal the bottom layer in places.

I must confess to losing track of exactly when some of the many activities were started or completed but between the morning of Day 3 and when we left after lunchtime on Day 4, I managed to achieve the following:

• An unfinished vessel which will be painted in a similar fashion to the bowl. It needs some work as I’m not sure about the Xpandaprint ‘lumps’ which look a bit like popcorn stuck on. White acrylic felt, with various layers underneath, was free-machined in random wavy lines, cut with a soldering iron and then sewn around a tube, before application of gesso and aforementioned Xpandaprint. Heat was applied and there you have it – popcorn!

• An unfinished hanging of cotton duck, layered with a woollen blanket, using a very similar technique to the vessel to produce a raised area in the centre. The photo shows it at a very early stage. It will have more stitched lines and be covered with gesso, white acrylic and painted with fluid acrylics as before. As you can see, it has been heated and burnt but all will be hidden!

Hanging

• The stencilled piece was prepared to make a small sketchbook by attaching it to a layer of felt, adding some free motion stitch and gluing it to book board. The holes are for the (lost) book screws which will hold the pages when I find where they are hiding!

Book Cover

• A folded pocket book out of the painted layered scrumpled tissue paper sample, which was first protected with acrylic wax.

Folded Pocket Book

It has to be said that several people on the course finished a lot more than that; some stitched and framed their samples or used them to make different book covers, while others went away with patterns and plans to make bags or small decorative shoes.

However, I was well and truly happy with what I achieved; the whole experience was fantastic and I felt very lucky to have been there in that concentrated, creative environment with a wonderful tutor and such talented, friendly people. I sat in my Bristol hotel on the way home, stitching my bowl - very tired but with a huge smile on my face.

Cath

A new season

Traverse is in a new season.

We have finished all our work for the 'Destinations' theme and have seen it exhibited twice this year already.    We will be exhibiting 'Destinations' again at the West Country Quilt & Textile Show at the end of August.   And there's a possibility that we may also be at The Craft Show at the NEC in November.

So onward into our new season with a new theme.

We met together last weekend which was both bittersweet and exciting.  We missed Jan and talked about her often over the weekend.  However we were excited to welcome Becca to her first Traverse session.   She is coming towards the end of her course at the Windsor School of Art and will be exhibiting with Traverse in 2019.

Drumroll please!  Announcing our new theme:

Revealed

Revealed, with its antonyms and synonyms, gives us a wide spectrum of areas to take our work.  And in its early stages, raises lots of questions including - should our work be technique-based or concept-based?  Each of us will be pondering other questions once we've each found the area we wish to work with.

During our weekend session we talked about our thoughts for Revealed so far.  What do we want to reveal?  What will remain hidden?

Deb started straightaway with the Embellisher using wool tops to make a background with holes.  There are many stages to go with this and who knows where it will take her.

Dia is currently thinking about weather currents and how the weather map reveals and hides parts of the UK.  It will be exciting to see how her textile work develops.

 Cath is upcycling this piece, which she started many moons ago on a workshop with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden - the first time she'd ever tried free-motion machining through so many layers and one of them was copper shim! The application of heat to the copper beforehand revealed beautiful colour changes - a wonderful surprise. The hidden layers were then unveiled after stitching by cutting back through the velvet, silk and organza to see the copper beneath. Cath is looking forward to returning to this and taking it further - seeing it from a new perspective.

Becca wants to continue with her work on 'Making the invisible visible'.  She is looking at hidden illness and hidden disabilities - and deafness in particular.  She is knitting audio tape to represent the jumbled word for deaf people.

I'm still considering my options especially the question of being concept-led or technique-led.  I am trying hard not to do 'hidden Venice'.   I am very taken with a paper-wash technique I learned recently which I feel lends itself to revealed/concealed ideas.   How much is revealed of the contents of the pocket depends on how much of the paper gets washed away - an intriguing prospect.

Who knows where our ideas will take us?  But it's exciting to have a new theme to work to for the next round of exhibitions.

Bernice

Tears and smiles and messy play

On Friday, we went to celebrate Jan's life with her family and friends. It was a heartfelt, moving funeral service, shared with over a hundred people whose lives had been touched by her in so many ways - activities known and unknown to us - and it was a privilege to be asked to share it, as we'd known her for such a small part of her varied life. It was lovely to be told by many people, how important Traverse was to her in these last few years and how much she enjoyed working with us. There was a sense of gratefulness that she managed to exhibit at the NEC, something which she was so very excited about and happy to do.

At the wake, the family had set up a wonderful display of just a small fraction of the work Jan had produced over the years - such a variety, reflecting her many passions and experiments with all things textile. Here are a few quick snapshots of the display -

Bernice's beautiful collage, including the squares we made earlier, was also displayed and will be included in a book of memories.

There was also another table set up for what I call 'messy play' - fabric paints, pens and fabric squares - laid out for people to decorate in their own way, to be included in the book of memories. These were small personal pieces, drawn or painted by family and friends and I didn't photograph them.

There was much merriment around that table, as we sat and played with Jan's wonderful collection of fabric paints and many people spoke of how much Jan would have loved it. We shared our memories and anecdotes and, in my case at least, got seriously messy! I ended up with two squares of painted fabric as I used the second one to blot the first, and then decided to flood one of them with water. Lateral thinking led me to the hand dryer in the loo and I did eventually get them dry enough to bring home with me, wrapped in serviettes; I really wanted to add some stitch before returning them for the memory book.

This is what I brought home - ripped paint-splodged serviettes and a blue one from the train ...

... and my two painted fabric squares.

I carefully separated the painted serviette layers.

The railway serviette had three layers so I removed one and then covered the remainder with roughly 50/50 PVA and water.

I layered up torn painted papers and glued them down in stages, starting from the centre and working my way outwards.

I used torn pieces of the extra blue layer to fill in any gaps and made sure it was well covered with the 50/50 mixture.

When it was dry it looked like this.

I intended to use this as a background for some kind of collage using the painted fabric squares but first I wanted to check if there were any holes - so I did this ...

I loved how it looked with the light shining through it ...

... and spent a long time taking close up shots - I went completely off task.

Now I'm not sure whether I will use this in the way I intended - it may have to change, to be revealed by a light behind it ... but I will definitely make something for the book with my splodged fabric squares, as an extra memory of the day. It feels right to finish what I started on that table. It was a healing process and just the right way to remember Jan - tears and smiles and messy play.

Cath

The British Quilt & Stitch Village

Traverse has recently returned from the quilt and stitch show at Uttoxeter Racecourse.  We were given a long run of exhibition boards in one of the main exhibition halls.  We were unsure about this space when we arrived to set up but it turned out to be a wonderful place to be.

We were right at the end of the exhibition hall and I was concerned that people wouldn't visit us.  How wrong I was!  By the end of day 1, we felt we had seen and spoken to more people than we did over the whole NEC show.  Cath put together some of the comments from our Visitors' book.

Looking at the exhibition from left to right, we started with Bernice's mixed media work, most of which is on the theme of Venice.

Next we featured Jan's beautiful work, which her family has kindly donated to Traverse.

Moving along the exhibition, we come to Dia's handstitched 'Northern Lights' pieces and the beginning of Cath's work.

Cath's work was inspired by many different places but they all displayed her passion for various forms of felting and embroidery.

Dia, Cath & Jan had made cards which sold well.  On the table we also displayed Dia's fascinating 3D vessels and Cath's silk paper candle holder.

Deb's work featured needle-felting, hand dyed fabrics and textured surfaces, including her 'unwearable' dress, which took centre stage.

All this work can be seen next at the end of August at the West Country Quilt & Textile show in Bristol.   At the current time that will be the last time that we exhibit 'Destinations'.

Watch this space for the reveal of our next theme!

Bernice

Friends are like stars ...

Friends are like stars … you can’t always see them but you know they’re always there. This little quote has come to mind several times recently as I’ve been making things specifically for friends – but for very different reasons.

First is a birthday present for a friend – a very patient friend who’s been waiting a long time for it. It’s been a challenge at times for me because it’s out of my comfort zone to follow her colour choices, using some fabrics which have sentimental value for her, rather than my usual vibrant bright colours. A work in progress ...

However, I’m finding a middle way between her choices and my preferences and isn’t that what friendship is all about? We may not always agree on everything and perhaps we don’t see some of our friends very often but there is a basic bond of friendship; we will go out of our comfort zone for them and we know they are always there for us.

The second project has been very different – preparing two small squares for a memory quilt for Jan, our friend who sadly died recently. Again, working out of my comfort zone with text and a formal design, I have tried to make the first square influenced by Jan and some of her methods. Beginning with hand knitted fabric, I have felted it on the embellisher and embroidered it with French knots, quoting Jan, “You can never have too many French knots” – I can hear her voice saying it now.

The second square is very much in my own style – brightly coloured and textured with sari silk strips needle felted onto a background and manipulated with machine embroidery and the embellisher to give a raised spiral. I have added beads as Jan also loved using beads.

The big difference between the two projects of course is that I will eventually give the birthday present to my friend, whereas the quilt will be for Jan’s family and friends to remember her and the influence she has had on all of us. Although she will never see the squares on her memory quilt, she will ‘always be there’.

Friends are like stars … you can’t always see them but you know they’re always there.

Cath

I leave tomorrow to meet Bernice and Deb to set up our stand at the Uttoxeter Quilt and Stitch Village, where we will be exhibiting Jan’s work in her memory.